Selinae shrugged, " Sure. Why not."

"As long as we establish that this floor is the tavern and the upper floors are off bounds..."

Jorn smiles, "Great! Thank you all for giving me the chance to get back on my feet. However, I'm also in need of a place to lay my head as well. I understand the upper floors are off limits, and I'd prefer the basement anyway. Part of my dwarven heritage, no doubt. Would that be a problem?"

" You'll need to talk to Bason and share with a cat, head in and chat to the three inside. They'll sort you out."

"Thank you very much, miss." Jorn says as he heads inside.

Y'all make it to The House of Inspired Hands without any difficulty. Upon entering you're greeted by a male, wood elf priest. "Welcome! How may Gond's Chosen be of help today?"

Silver just follows the group remaining quiet as usual. His armor taking on more different look, black leather pants, a white button down and black long coat with his swords at his side.

Selinae blushed thinking back on how badly yesterday went, " Uh, we need to talk to Nim again....just for a minute or two. Or the Boss Lady I suppose."

The priest tilts his head in confusion and mouths "boss lady" to himself before nodding, "Yes of course." You then see the priest cast a spell. He just stands there for a good 20 seconds or so before looking back to you. "High Priestess Valetta and Nim are on their way down to speak with you. Please let me know if you need anything else." And with this the priest returns to his desk.

About 4 minutes go by before the inner doors open and Valetta and Nim enter the room. "Glad to see that you've returned... alone. I suppose you would be wanting your payment for the job? Please come with me to my office, I have a couple of items for you to choose from."

Valetta and Nim lead you down a side hall you've not been down before and into a modest sized room. On the north side of the room is a desk, the east wall contains a bookcase, and the south wall has a workbench on it. On the workbench are there appears to be four objects with clothes covering them. Valetta explains, while motioning to Nim, "We have four non-magical inventions here. You may choose one of them as your payment in addition to the 500 gold pieces I will be paying you." Once Nim removes the cloth she continues, "Here we have Adjustable Stilts. By wearing these you can become 2 to 5 feet taller." Nim removes the second cloth while Valetta says, "This is a Backpack Parachute. It allows one to jump from great heights and land without injury." Nim continues to the third cloth, "This item is called a Barking Box. When turned on, it will start to bark if it detects any vibrations within 15 feet. Great little alarm." Nim removes the final cloth and steps out of the way. Valletta continues, "And the final object is a Matchless Pipe. For the pipe smoker who doesn't want to keep a fire nearby, this pipe can light itself by simply flicking the switch on it."

Item descriptions (because for some reason they're not listed under equipment or magical items)

"Ohh my these are wonderful inventions," Phaedra says as they list them off.

"And you were right about what we should have done Valetta. I believe we all got a little carried away in trying to figure out who was pulling the strings behind what happened and why Lady Grulhund wanted to do what she did. Please accept my apologies, both of you."

"I would say the barking box sounds the most useful for us all but I will leave it up to the other to decide. What I really wanted to talk to you about was a hand gesture that the Nimblewright made before... well. It did this"

Phaedra re-creates the hand gesture as best as she can.

Selinae looked non-plussed, she had completely forgotten about payment.

Kestrell meets Selinae's eye and mouths "Payment?!?"  neither of them being aware of the prior arrangements made.  Then he nods as Phaedra makes the hand gesture, "Yep, you nailed it!"

Nim sees the hand signal Phaedra performs, "Thank you. It said thank you."

Selinae sank to the floor and hugged her knees with her arms, hiding her face.

Kestrell sighs with disgust.  "I've got a hand gesture you can translate!" but he stops short of flipping the bird.  "Grab the dog box and let's go."

Phaedra is clearly torn between one party member breaking down in tears and the other's rudeness. She goes and pats the goliath on the head, "Come on let us go."

Valetta is stunned by the hand signal as well, only recovering after Kestrell storms out of the office. The high priestess quickly steps over to her desk and pulls a pouch of coins from on of the drawers. She then picks up the Barking Box and walks over to where Phaedra is comforting Selinae and hands the items to Phaedra. Addressing the two ladies she softly speaks, "Thank you for doing this job. I am so sorry that it brought you such pain."

OOC: 500 gold and Barking box added to Phaedra's inventory

After the party joins him outside, Kestrell apologizes.  "I'm [Canadian Accent]sorry[/Canadian Accent], I don't know what came over me!  Something about that place rubs me the wrong way, ya know?"

"Should we go investigate this Castle fellow?"

Phaedra accepts the gifts and nods her thanks. "Thank you, Valetta. Hopefully, someday we will be able to work together on a happier note, maybe with our churches. It is good to show emotion, after all, if your heart can be touched it shows that you have a heart and that type of person makes for the most loyal friend. But for now, we have the rest of this mess to try and get to the bottom of."

Phaedra helps Selinae up and walks her out of the temple.

"So for helping the Temple of Gond they have rewarded us with 500g and this barking box. A good alarm system by the sounds of it, which .we may need if this Stormcastle is another cultist" she adds in a very disapproving voice.

"Yes Kestrell, we probably should."

Opening up the bag she starts to split the coins between them all.

OCC: Seeing we are five in number, that's 100g each.

OOC: Removed 400 gold from Phaedra and added 100 gold each to Elon, Kestrell, Selinae, and Silver.

Selinae takes the gold ( and drops 90 of it in the next orphanage collection box they pass).

She picks Phaedra up giving her a big hug ( which also serves, with a few cracks and pops, to realign her spine), " Lets go find this guy."

She wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve.....and follows the always impetuous Kestrell.